This doctor was the young female one, with a piercing through her upper ear that I’d seen Cassie admiring. Short, scrubbed nails. Practical hands. How I envied her, watching her bustle around. The certainty of knowing you had skills, you could save someone. Pushing aside much older people to insert needles and tubes and read machines and pump life back into patients through their chests. Why hadn’t I steered Cassie to the sciences? Why had I let her drag along the bottom in school, spending more time on her eyeliner than her work?
‘Mrs Morris?’
‘Yes. Sorry.’ I did not want Child Doctor to think badly of me. ‘You were saying?’
‘His liver isn’t doing so well. You understand what this means?’
I would have snapped back that I had a degree, I went to Oxford, except I really didn’t understand. The words were going into my ears but my brain was rejecting them. ‘He’s not getting better?’
‘Not as fast as we’d like. The liver can regenerate when it suffers trauma, but the damage was extensive. If there’s no improvement in the next few days, we’ll have to put him on the transplant list for a donor organ.’
Waiting for someone else’s life to crash, in other words. A shudder ran through me, thinking of those accidents and deaths still to come.
‘I think it would be wise to push ahead with matching tissue types within the family, also. It’s possible to donate a small section of liver, which can then grow to full size in the other person. You yourself are unlikely to match, and your son is – ten, yes? So too young. But your daughter might be a candidate, if she matched. She’s sixteen?’
‘Fifteen.’ She’d be sixteen in a matter of weeks – young for her school year – and that was another thing I had to think about. How could I give her a birthday with all this going on?
The doctor was frowning. ‘It’s young. But if you consented, and she was willing, that might work.’
Cut into Cassie, and take out her flesh? Her golden unmarked skin, sliced open? I started to shake. ‘What would that mean?’ My voice sounded echoey. It was like when you’re really drunk, you hear yourself talking but you don’t really understand that those words are coming from you.
‘It’s not to be taken lightly. It can be quite debilitating. And the scarring and so on.’ I felt like she was running through a checklist of things to say to the family. ‘Why don’t you discuss it with her, anyway. If not, we’ll have to wait for an anonymous donor.’
I didn’t know what to say. How could I ask Cassie to do this, cut up her body, take bits out of it, for God’s sake? Did Mike even deserve it? I nodded mechanically, and the doctor gave me her tired, automatic smile, and went out. I’d promised I would talk to Cassie, but of course I didn’t have to. I was her mother, and she was underage. I could just not give consent. I could just not tell her the tissue matching was an option.
Mike was there, but not there. I felt I was alone in the room, even though he lay there, his chest rising and falling, his cheeks yellow-tinged. His face was growing greyer by the day. His skin was dry, shrivelled, washed by efficient hands with astringent hospital soap from a squirty jar. He would have hated that, with his moisturisers and toners. I brushed the hair from his face. Despite myself, despite knowing he’d cheated on me multiple times, and in my own home too, I felt guilty. I was as bad as him now. I’d taken Bill into our bed.
And yet I didn’t feel bad. I felt as if, finally, I’d done the right thing. How patient Bill was. What a stupid, naïve girl I’d been, dangling myself in front of him like that, darting back to Mike if things ever went too far. It served me right that Bill had been swept up by a beautiful, assured older woman. But it all could have gone so differently that night of the ball, and maybe it would have, if Martha Rasby hadn’t died.
‘What happened that night?’ I muttered to Mike, once again. ‘Did you really leave her safe in the garden?’ It didn’t sound right, as I said it out loud. If he was so concerned about helping the poor drunk girl, why not stay with her, see she was safe? Why take her to a secluded spot then just leave her? Oh Mike. Just wake up, will you, so I can ask you these questions? Under his dry grey eyelids, his eyes moved. I wondered what he was dreaming.
Mike was in a coma. Maybe he had no idea that, as soon as he woke up, he was going on trial for rape. He’d no idea I knew about the extent of his affair with Karen. Or that Jake was his son. Had he really not known, never suspected? I thought of the money going out of our accounts, the neat regular sum every month. Almost like child support. Had he been paying Karen off all this time? My mind told me it was impossible, unthinkable, but I knew that nothing was impossible any more. I wondered what he’d say, if he knew the choice was between him and Cassie, if he’d want her to donate part of her liver or if he’d rather take his chances on the transplant list. I wondered, once again, how we ever ended up here.
‘Mrs Morris?’ It was DC Devine again, with a light tread.
I jumped. ‘Oh, hello. There’s no change, I’m afraid.’
‘I know.’ He looked at me, his kind features rearranging themselves into formal, anxious lines. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news.’
1996
Here’s what I know. Although it’s hard to recall the details over so many years, this is the truth as far as I can remember, as opposed to what I have sometimes imagined late at night, lying awake beside a sleeping Mike.
Martha was ‘on it’ that night, was what I heard muttered by Victoria Adams in the loos several hours into the ball, and I was flattered she was even speaking to me, Victoria who kept her own horse stabled just outside of town. ‘Jesus, she’s really on it,’ was what she said, flicking at her long blonde hair in the mirror. ‘I should take her home.’
I could tell she wanted me to talk her out of it. ‘She’ll be OK. Everyone’s a bit pissed. She won’t want to go.’ I lowered my voice and jerked my head to the door. ‘Karen never goes home when I try to make her.’ She rolled her eyes at me and I thought how strange it was, me and her in cahoots as the sensible friends, and Karen and Martha – Martha! – the unstable pissheads. In truth, I had lost track of Karen some time ago, and had been drifting in a pleasant haze from quad to quad, room to room, conversation to conversation. It seemed as if finally everyone wanted to talk to me, ask how I’d be spending the summer, get me in their photo. Compliment my dress.
‘Looking hot,’ said Stephen Magill, his bow tie askew. I flushed. I felt hot. I felt sexy and popular. I just wished Mike could see me. On and on I drifted, the night air cool and perfumed on my skin. It didn’t feel like England, or the quad we crossed daily with our books tucked into our arms, or the coffee room we sprawled in watching Neighbours at lunchtime. Instead it was transformed into a Moroccan tent, clinking with beads and coloured lights. I paused to pick up a glass of something minty and sweet and boozy. This had been so worth the money. My father was wrong.
I didn’t want to think about my father, how he’d raise his eyebrows at the drunken students snogging on the lawn, the whoops from the dance floor, the melted ice turned dirty by passing feet in heels. Alison Carter’s £100 wrap abandoned on the grass, a fag burn in it. He’d think we were wasteful, spoiled, extravagant. But what else were we meant to be when they’d brought us here and told us the whole world was spread out under our feet, just ready to be walked on? I wished I’d realised this sooner. There was nothing wrong in being elitist. We were the elite, and I’d let my insecurity keep me down for three years. I’d let Mike keep me down. I wasn’t going to do it any more. Stephen Magill had said I was hot tonight, I was bloody well going to go and enjoy myself. There had to be more to my university experience than Mike, even if it was at the very last minute.
Suddenly, he was there. Standing in line at a gin stall. He saw me, and his eyes flicked away, and that told me everything. Still, I went to him. I didn’t have enough self-possession to walk away. ‘Where’ve you been?’ My voice was louder than I meant. ‘I was looking for you.’
‘Jesus, Ali, we’re not joi
ned at the hip.’
‘Who’s that for?’ I pointed at the gin and tonic some poor first year was pouring, her hands red with cold. ‘Your date?’
I was joking, because Mike was supposed to be my boyfriend, but he frowned, and I saw that, suddenly, precariously, all bets were off. ‘What’s going on, Mike? This was meant to be our night.’ I felt tears prick at my eyes and the whole expensive night was threatening to go south.
Mike shrugged, irritated. ‘I just want some space. We’ve been stuck together for three years. This is my last night to hang with people. I just – stop nagging, OK?’
At that point, I could have cried or made a scene, sent some sympathetic girl to find Karen. But I managed to turn and walk away from him, and I’ve always been proud of that. Finding a little dignity, even with the sting of my father’s slap still on my skin.
I walked over the lawn, which usually we weren’t supposed to do, my heels catching in the grass. Impatiently I kicked them off, hooking them in one hand and letting my toes sink into the grass in relief. This was life. Screw Mike, he didn’t matter. I was barefoot on an Oxford quad, my hair tumbling down, silk around my legs, a drink melting in my hand, and a man in a tuxedo crossing the lawn to me. Bill. I saw right away it was Bill, from the height, from the hang of the old-fashioned tux that looked so cool on him. He was here. And I knew that, despite what he’d said, Mike was watching me across the lawn. I was tired of it, I realised. I was twenty-one and uni was over. In the real world I would have no more hold over Mike than anyone.
I walked to Bill, whose tuxedo had been his grandfather’s. It looked cool – hipster before such things were invented, the trousers loose in the hips and the shirt ruffled. And for the first time since I’d known him, I didn’t look back at Mike. And that was why I didn’t know exactly where he was when Martha Rasby died.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It’s funny how simple things, when you overthink them, turn into impossible tasks. I was sitting holding our landline phone, and I’d been in the same position for twenty minutes now and still not dialled the number. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten it. How could I, when it was the first one I’d ever memorised. It was just so hard to pick up the phone and call.
What were my choices? Mike was facing not only a rape charge, but also possibly one for the murder of Martha Rasby in June 1996. Adam Devine had explained it all to me, that not only were the CPS not dropping the rape charge, but that they were also going to reopen Martha’s case in the light of new evidence. No one had ever been caught for her killing. We’d all told ourselves it was some rando who got into the grounds, found her alone. Even though there was security, and brick walls topped with broken glass, to keep the poor people off our lush lawns.
What new evidence, I had asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me. It didn’t matter; I knew. Karen had delivered on her threat. She wanted Mike in prison, no matter what, so she’d told them the truth about that night. Maybe they even knew what I’d done, that I’d lied back then. Was that a crime too? I wished so much I could remember every moment of the ball, sift through my vague drunk recollections, pick out the right image to tell me what really happened. The wilted carnation in Bill’s buttonhole. The dawn sun glinting on a discarded champagne bottle. The gleam of Martha’s white silk dress, disappearing into the Fellows’ Garden, a man in a tux holding her up. Mike. Only imagined, since I never actually saw them together. And where was Karen? How had my best friend abandoned me so thoroughly for our last night at uni? Where was Callum, where was Jodi? All of us pieces on a chessboard, moving around the college that night. I wished I knew.
I could have tried Mike’s parents, asked them for money. But I knew they didn’t have much, had managed to sink it into property or lose it in dodgy investment schemes. I should call them anyway, explain how he was, but I couldn’t face their twittering confusion, the fact they were clearly alarmed at the prospect of travelling back from France. I’d wait until I had more news. If he got worse, of course, they’d have to come back anyway. To say goodbye.
There was no choice. Mike was not being released from hospital any day soon, or the charges dropped, and that meant we had no money. And that meant desperate measures were called for. I steeled myself, as if jumping into freezing water. It rang once, twice, three times. She’d answer of course, she never went anywhere these days.
A click. A wavery, hostile voice. ‘Hello?’ Even with caller ID, she didn’t know my number, I called so seldom.
I swallowed. ‘Mum, it’s me.’
Growing up, I hated my father. It was something Callum and I had in common, that we’d been able to bond over despite our differences. His dad was tyrannical, cold, demanding. And mine was – angry. Violent. I remember the feeling of shame when they came to visit me that first term at uni, appearing in their navy Focus with the dent from where Mum ran it into a bollard at Sainsbury’s. Dad yelling at me because it was hard to park in central Oxford. Mum’s floral suit from the eighties, too tight. I’d hustled them away as fast as I could. My parents could not afford to take me somewhere like Gee’s or the Old Parsonage, so we went to Pizza Express. Dad examining the menu over his little bifocals. ‘Bloody rip-off for a bit of bread and tomato.’
Mum trying to remember the names of my friends, ones I’d thrown out casually in my rare phone calls this year. ‘And how’s Kate?’
‘Karen.’ I lifted a dough ball, smelled the garlic off it. Put it back down. Dad had already spilled tomato sauce on his anorak. I felt it rise up in me, anger, frustration, sadness – I didn’t know them any more, I barely recognised them – and I monosyllabled my way through the dinner, Dad querying every item on the bill.
‘And what was this? And this?’ So embarrassing. I sank down in my seat, hoping no one else from college was there.
When I’d left them – they were driving back that night so as not to pay for a hotel – I ran all the way to college. Down the high street, where freezing fog was already gathering. I’d already learned to love Oxford like this, silent and blurred, the spires looming out of the mist. I picked up my pace on the cobbles of Radcliffe Square, the low heels I’d put on for dinner catching on the stones. The Radcliffe Camera, so proudly round, and I had a ticket that let me in behind those windows, still lit at 9 p.m., late-night studiers bent over books. I was in this world. I could go in there if I wanted, take down some rare book, stare out at the misty streets. I ran past the spooky empty walls of All Souls – like Willy Wonka’s factory, you never saw anyone going in or coming out – and down Holywell Street towards home. In the wicket gate, punching in the code to Mike’s staircase. My face was red and flushed and my heart beat high in my chest. I was part of this world. I belonged. And I deserved to have this boy, the one who kissed me in the quad and in Queen’s Lane under the gargoyles, then blanked me in the bar, the one who turned up at my door sweaty and drunk from rugby nights out, crashed out beside me smelling of curry. We were together, and yet not. He’d never called me his girlfriend. He’d never touched me beyond those kisses. Maybe because he knew I was a virgin, and frightened. But I was sick of being that. Maybe I’d take up smoking like Karen, wear more black, hang out outside the English faculty being louche and talking about postmodernism. I could do it. I belonged here just as much as they did.
I banged hard on Mike’s door. The corridor always smelled like hot bleach, the products the scouts – what we called our cleaners – used on the bathrooms, and the too-high heating. Doubts tried to prick at me – what if he had another girl in there? – but I shook them off. This was what I deserved.
He opened it in his pyjama bottoms, a Nirvana T-shirt on top, and from behind in the dark room I saw the blue glow of a TV and heard recorded gunfire. He was watching something – and how mad it seemed to me that he had his own TV in his room! ‘Oh, hi,’ he said, surprised.
‘Can I come in?’
He blinked, as if seeing me properly. ‘Are you pissed?’
‘No. I was out with my parents.’ I wishe
d I could explain to him how I felt, that I realised now I had to shrug all that off, BHS and road atlases and querying the bill. ‘I think you should let me come in.’ I was trying to be coquettish. I wished I was drunk, in fact. It would have been easier.
He stood back slightly and I went in, throwing myself on his bed. ‘Would you like some tea?’ he said politely. This was going well. If he hadn’t wanted me there I knew he wouldn’t have opened the door to me. Said he had an essay or something.
‘Anything stronger?’ I said. I propped myself up on my elbows like a model, then realised I had my shoes on. And tights. I’d have to pop out to the loo and take them off. My dress rode up around my thighs.
Mike poured us rum into mugs – his had Star Wars on; mine had He-Man – and apologised for the lack of mixers. I swigged mine neat, grimacing, glad that it would wipe out any residual garlic taste in my mouth. My heart was thudding still, loud as a bell tolling the hour. Mike sat down on his desk chair. I realised our moods were out of step. He was tired, bookish, where I was wild and off-kilter. ‘What did you do tonight?’
He stretched. ‘Hung out with Kar a bit. We got a pint in the King’s Arms.’
Jealousy stabbed through me. I’d been trailing my parents round Christ Church, dutifully pointing out the historical bits, while they’d been drinking and hanging out. Kar. I swallowed it down with more rum. I had to find a way to change the trajectory of this. I got up and went to him, leaning over his desk to look at the pictures he’d stuck there. His parents looked distinguished and indulgent, both things I wished for fervently. I wondered if I’d always be jealous of everyone else here. If I’d ever make it mine. Deciding I’d act more drunk than I was, I sat down heavily on Mike’s knee.
What You Did Page 16
